Official meddling to blame for lofty home prices, too

BIO

Jake van der Kamp is a native of the Netherlands, a Canadian citizen, and a longtime Hong Kong resident. He started as a South China Morning Post business reporter in 1978, soon made a career change to investment analyst and returned to the newspaper in 1998 as a financial columnist.

The government should impose more property-cooling measures unless flat prices drop at least 20 per cent, a leading government housing adviser says.

SCMP, June 10

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. The normal practice for testing public opinion on a new initiative is to have the top government official concerned call in selected journalists and tell them they can only attribute it to "a high-placed source".

I must confess I have never been selected for this honour. They know in government whom they can trust and whom they cannot. I would immediately break my sacred sworn pledge of honour and identify the weasel.

But in this case it cannot be an official statement. It fails the first test.

The statement maker has identified himself - Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, a professional government committee sitter whose committees include the Long Term Housing Strategy Steering Committee and the Housing Authority's subsidised housing committee.

If things were done properly, each of these two committees would now say whether Mr Wong speaks for them.

Neither will do so, however, as they are political committees set up for loudmouths to tire themselves out in talking where they can do no harm. They agree with him, of course, but their minders in the bureaucracy will stop them from doing so officially.

Nonetheless, I suspect that Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah is of their mind. He is more politically astute than to say in public that he wants home prices to fall by 20 per cent, but he is under pressure to do something and does not like to be told that low interest rates are the primary driving force of high property prices.

With our peg to the US dollar, he can do nothing about low interest rates, and he wants a more visible culprit.

He has thus taken the easy way out by blaming speculators and, like Committeeman Wong, is given to lashing at them with measures that have not overly suffered from thought.

Take, for instance, his latest increase in stamp duty rates, a tool of price suppression that has proved singularly unsuccessful ever since he picked it up three years ago.

The latest measures will not apply to permanent residents who do not yet own a home. That will fix those nasty dirty money speculators from across the border, reckons our John.

The first thing he forgets is that, if he does manage to exclude these speculators, Hong Kong permanent residents will be stung the worst when property prices fall again. He will have done outside speculators the favour of keeping them out of the crash.

I have a hard time believing, however, that speculators from across the border favour tiny flats in downmarket Hong Kong private housing estates. They play their games with bigger luxury flats.

Yet, as the chart shows, prices of small flats have risen much faster than prices of larger ones over the past five years. This is evidence that low interest rates, rather than speculators, are pushing prices up.

But I expect our financial secretary to ignore the evidence as usual. Nasty stuff, that hard evidence. It gets in the way of blaming speculators.

There is also a good reason why prices of small flats may continue to be more buoyant than prices of larger ones. They are typically starter flats for permanent residents, and John Tsang has granted them concessions that will make them more attractive and therefore pricier.

That's what happens when bureaucrats tamper with things they don't understand, such as markets.

Try to club a market down, and it will just club you over the back of your own head. Our man just keeps doing it, with the usual results.

Whatever what ‘minders’ means, or officials suspected meddling in the market, I can’t help to offer this observation that John Tsang at least has done something for Hong Kong – a real foolish statement as it is. While Tsang’s boss, according to news last night that he is visiting NYC for three days, if the cancelled meeting with mayor Bloomberg resumes, I would like Leung to request borrowing his city comptroller to work for his administration so that numbers become more dependable. Ability in policy inspiration is not required and discouraged. Just get the numbers right in the accounting.

keresearch Jun 11th 20132:06pm

all the HK housing market needs is long term stable policies. The administration have merely exacerbated the booms and busts since 1993...

In addition to a long term stable housing policies, the government should also consider bringing in capital gain tax, and higher property tax on non principal residence, widen the tax base such that government revenue does not depend so heavily on high land prices. Measures should be introduced to change the mentality that housing is a necessity and a livelihood issue rather than just investment and free economy. It's just ridiculous that property prices can increase 20% a year. I bet not too many investment will have this kind of return.

2013/6/11
I can’t agree more. Implement capital gain tax against property speculation which what US did in the 80s to stop the Japanese invasion in US real estate market. There might be some sign that Chinese is now investing in New York City paying most expansively for the General Motor Building. It will be a headache for Mayor Bloomberg to keep New York City competitive even in keeping its Fortune 500 regional offices in the city for long.